Let emotions be your guide

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This has been a difficult week. I found myself having little patience with my patients and their families, my co-workers and my family members. A close co-worker told me I was being snarky. She was quick to point out that I’m not usually like that, and we laughed and decided I must need a drink after work. I found myself having little patience listening to my youngest son tell me jokes he had heard. And my husband even commented that I was “picking” on him. Have you had those kinds of times? I think we all do.

Marshall Rosenberg describes the root of all anger is a need that’s not being fulfilled. It can be valuable if we use it as an alarm clock to wake up. My alarm clock happened to be the emotional support dog we had recently gotten for my youngest son. This little dog can be the cutest thing, but in the last week he has been very difficult. He has bitten my son twice.

The dog that is supposed to be his emotional support pet has bitten him. Twice. He was a rescue dog that was then trained to be an emotional support pet. We tell ourselves that he just has lots of fear, and his fear is manifested in aggressive behavior. My son has become very attached to him, and I’ve had to reassure him that we won’t give up on the dog.

This morning he growled at me again, and I had to put him in an assertive hold until he calmed down. My husband and I then left to go do our usual weekend writing. And we started to talk. Over the course of our conversation I became aware that I wanted more ease in my life. That was the need that wasn’t being met. But it was more than that.

I realized that my need for ease was due to my taking responsibility for all kinds of things in the last week. Particularly the decision to get this emotional support pet. And the more we talked, the more we connected with the overwhelming thoughts of responsibility that go with having a child with a disability. Just uncovering those thoughts and needs led to a release. It was as though I could breathe a little again.

Pema Chödrön talks about the skill of failing well. By that she means being able to hold the pain of things that are happening that you really don’t want to be happening. Being able to welcome unwelcome feelings. I know I try to protect myself from unwanted feelings, and I think we all do. There is some fear in feeling unwanted feelings. It’s the unknown, or even more so, the fear we will get lost.

Somehow those feelings will overwhelm us, destroy us. Or at the very least destroy something about our lives. Maybe it’s even the fear that this picture we have built up about ourselves, about our lives, that it’s perfect, it will crumble.

But the more we run from those unwanted feelings, the bigger and scarier they get. The only way to true peace is through them. Feelings lead us to the needs we have, either met or unmet. And from there we can find the stories we are telling ourselves. The stories that keep us from experiencing the whole, wonderful person we really are. Pema Chödrön says we are one blink of an eye away from being awake. And those scary, difficult feelings are the alarm clock to wake us up. What unwelcome feelings have you had this week?

Heather Schlessman

Heather Schlessman, PhD is a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner who has spent her career either working with or teaching about families. She is also a mother who, like so many other parents, spent years muddling her way raising 3 wonderfully different children, one who happens to be experiencing a disability. Fortunately she has a life partner who muddled along with her. Spending most of her time trying to be perfect, as that would be the safest way to live, she became aware of a desire to be able to see people in a more compassionate way. Little did she know that the person she needed the most compassion for was herself. There is a saying that when you are ready to learn a teacher will appear, and so it was for Dr. Schlessman. She was introduced to the work of Dr. Marshall Rosenberg, the developer of Nonviolent Communication, and her world completely changed. She learned a way to have an intimate connection with herself and others, a way to truly contribute. Her passion now is to help others find their way to a more compassionate life. You can find more of Dr. Schlessman’s empathic expressions along with her husband’s, Rev. Mark Schlessman on their website.